On the way home from the cabin I stopped in at our go-to stream. It had received an unannounced stocking, the first of the year, at some point in the past few days. As I expected, there was somebody else in the parking lot. I went downstream first and didn’t see whoever it was. They must have been upstream, and when I came up they were gone. The banks were covered with lots of different fresh footprints. I was tired and cranky and sunburned, and my heart was only half in it. The stream was surprisingly low, as low as I’ve ever seen it, and although you could clearly see it had been stocked, lots of normally productive pools were low and empty.
It started pretty well. The first downstream stocking pool held a good number of fresh rainbows. I still had one hardy, much-rescued egg pattern. I used that in the tandem nymph rig, and also caught two on a sparkle bugger.
I caught five from the pool, which is the most ever. So I actually thought it was going to be a pretty good day of pulling out recent arrivals. But all of the other pools were low and empty. I think there’d been a stampede of anglers. The stocking day wasn’t published, but the five day window was. And there was just a herd of footprints everywhere.
I went a bit downstream, caught a fat chub, landed one more trout, and lost another, and that was it.
I walked most of the standard water, but my enthusiasm was seriously starting to crash. I called it up at the big pool, and headed back to the car in early afternoon. The final totals were six rainbow and five chub.